GCC GSoC 2021: Call for project ideas and mentors

[Richard Biener]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 4:09 PM Martin Jambor <mjambor@suse.cz> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> there have already been some inquiries from prospective students and so
> I would like to start preparing for the next year of Google Summer of
> Code now.  I'll be happy to volunteer to be the main Org Admin for GCC
> again - so let me know if you think I shouldn't or that someone else
> should, but otherwise I'll assume that I will.
>
> First and foremost, I would like to ask all (moderately) seasoned GCC
> contributors to consider mentoring a student this year and ideally also
> come up with a project that they would like to lead.  I'm collecting
> proposal on our wiki page https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode - feel
> free to add yours to the top list there.  Or, if you are unsure, post
> your offer and project idea as a reply here to the mailing list.
>
>
> ============ The following si different this year(!): ==================
>
> Google has decided to cut the size of the projects by half, this year
> the projects are supposed to take "175 hours over 10-week coding
> period."  There will be only two evaluations.
>
> While this offers much more flexibility to both mentors and students, I
> am afraid It is not exactly good news for big and complex projects like
> GCC because finding smaller projects is more difficult.  Also, students
> will have to start their project prepared to begin working straight away
> as they cannot be expected to use any of these hours to learn their way
> around.  The coding period has also been shortened but is still
> relatively long (June 7 - August 16).

Since I've come aware of this last year I have my doubts of the usefulness
of GSoC for GCC from now on.

Richard.

> See [1] for more on changes in the program this year.
>
> ========================================================================
>
>
> Eventually, each listed project idea should have a) a project
> title/description b) more detailed description of the project (2-5
> sentences) c) expected outcomes d) skills required/preferred and e)
> possible mentors [2].
>
> Project ideas that come without an offer to also mentor them are always
> fun to discuss, by all means feel free to reply to this email with yours
> and I will attempt to find a mentor, but please be aware that we can
> only use the suggestion it if we actually find one.
>
> Everybody in the GCC community is invited to go over
> https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/SummerOfCode and remove any outdated or
> otherwise bad project suggestions and help improve viable ones which are
> not yet viable.  I would especially want to ask libstdc++ people to do
> so, and GFortran folk to check that their suggestions from last year are
> still good.
>
> Finally, please continue helping (prospective) students figure stuff out
> about GCC like you always do.  So far I think all of them enjoyed
> working with us, even if many sometimes struggled with GCC's complexity.
>
> More information together with GSoC 2021 time line is available at
> https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com
>
> Thank you, let's hope we attract some young talent again this year.
>
> Martin
>
>
> [1] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/10/google-summer-of-code-2021-is-bringing.html
> [2] https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list